


Nobody Knows Me At Home Any More

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:32:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set mid-series two, Bodie and Doyle negotiate their work ops as well as a fledgling sexual relationship. Sort of ‘slice of life’, veering between shaving and shotguns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody Knows Me At Home Any More

**Author's Note:**

> My title comes from the song Lippy Kids by Elbow. Allegra has bravely (because I can be idiosyncratic about how I relate favourite fannish things to favourite songs), and beautifully, used this song for her vid to accompany my story. Interestingly, given that we come from quite disparate regions of the world, all three of us involved in creating this story - me, Allegra, and my beta, Unbelievable2 - are Elbow fans. Who'd a thunk? Speaking of Unbelievable2, thank you for your thorough beta and Brit-pick. Thank you also to the fan who offered me advice about the MOD scientist portion of my story. I know it's still implausible but it's hopefully less implausible, yes?

Bodie knew where matters were headed as soon as he saw Ray’s piercing, challenging stare in the reflection of the HQ locker room mirror. Some things ran underground for a while, before explicitly making themselves known. Ray came up close beside him and touched the tip of his finger to the shaving brush, which was heavy with foam. 

“You’re a bloody shaving snob, aren’t you?” he enquired, with the same joking disdain that he used to disparage Bodie’s support for Liverpool on Match of the Day.

“It’s not snobbery to want things that last,” Bodie said, carefully running the razor down his cheek. He was only in his vest, and he was overcome with the urge to preen somehow. Flex his muscles, or puff out his chest. Instead, he ran the razor down his face and swept the lather away with a minor flourish. Ray smiled crookedly, standing just a little too close to count as matey.

Bodie’s shaving kit lay open in front of him, leather and well set-up and cared for. Ray lightly ran his index finger over it.

“Disposables would do you as well. Or an electric shaver.”

“And a cheap and nasty brush from Woolworths, no doubt,” Bodie said, and plucked the brush out from under Ray’s curious hand and rinsed it carefully under the tap. Badger bristle, and just as expensive as Ray suspected it was. “And as far as electric shavers go, I don’t fancy a dry shave, and I’ll tell you something, neither do the ladies.” This last part of Bodie’s sentence came out mildly mispronounced, as he curled his upper lip over his teeth, the better to shave under his nose.

Ray turned to lean against the edge of the sink. He crossed his arms and Bodie took carte blanche to stare into the mirror and admire the strain of the white cotton shirt against the deceptively slim back and shoulders.

“Oh, yeah,” Ray said, in the tones of a man reminded of something almost forgotten. “Ladies. Women. Chance would be a fine thing. Comparing their opinions about the virtues of a dry shave versus something more… civilised.” Ray turned his head, his glance still more than a touch sidelong, and up and down as well. He was taking in the view. Bodie wished him joy of it, and returned his own gaze to the back view Ray presented in the mirror. He’d been shaving for rising twenty years; he hardly needed to pay that much attention. “Can’t say that I’ve had any complaints. When I get the opportunity,” Ray said morosely. Bodie’s excellent peripheral vision informed him of Ray’s abstracted touch of fingers to jaw, and he put out his left hand and ran his hand briefly, insolently, over Ray’s skin.

“Buy yourself a good safety razor, mate. You’d be amazed.” Bodie wielded his own. Stainless steel, grooved handle, high-quality workmanship. He’d grown to appreciate civilisation’s trappings because he knew what it was to miss them.

“Would I now? The birds all tell you that your face is soft as a baby’s bum, do they?”

Bodie turned his head to look Ray in the eyes. “They tend to be impressed by my other attributes, actually.” Ray’s derisive, wordless exclamation echoed off the tiles. Bodie blithely ignored him. “I mean, of course, my charm. My savoir faire. My way with a wine list.”

“Oh, especially your way with a wine list.” Ray launched himself from his lean against the sink with a spring of his hips, and shrugged into his jacket. “Christ, I hate ties. And bloody bun fights,” he said, once again too close to Bodie. Deft fingers fiddled with the knot of the hated tie, as Bodie rinsed his face. “Maybe you can impress some Whitehall wife with your attributes.”

“I’d better leave them languishing, I think. Lest Cowley’s basilisk glare freeze me.” Bodie made a gesture with his hands, meant to indicate his decided lack of terror at this prospect, and Ray grinned, mercurially cheerful after his earlier strop. “Come round when you’ve got a free moment,” Bodie said, basking briefly in the warmth. “I’ll demonstrate the superior quality of proper shaving equipment to you.”

Ray’s sunshiny gaze sharpened to a laser beam. “What? Let me play with the sacred toys?” 

Bodie put his gear away, and reached for his clean shirt on its hanger. “No, I’ll give you the works. A demonstration, given that you wouldn’t know what to do with good quality stuff.”

“A demonstration? You’ll give me a shave?”

“CI5 attracts men of many parts,” Bodie said slyly, doing up his buttons.

“And all the parts screw loose,” was the retort. “You’re on, mate.”

They bounded down the stairs. “Not even the chance to go home for a cuppa,” Ray lamented.

Bodie’s consoling offer to help smuggle out sausage rolls for afters (assuming that such plebeian fare would be offered, assuming that hard-working CI5 security men would ever get close enough to the buffet to try) was not well-received.

~*~

It might have been fun to try the seduction via shaving route, but in the end it was Coogan and his attack dog lawyers that broke Bodie’s patience for the game. More honestly, it was Ray (it was always Ray), but it was still Coogan’s fault.

“You need to stop doing that, mate,” Bodie said.

“What?” Ray asked distractedly. At Bodie’s pointed look, he stared down at his lap, where he was rubbing the fisted knuckles of his right hand gently against his left palm, as if something hurt still. “Ah,” he said, abashed. “Getting a bit of a habit, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, might be,” Bodie said with gentle sarcasm.

Ray shrugged. “Stress relief.”

“Brooding, Doyle. I have a vague recollection that we’ve had this conversation before.”

“Yeah.” Ray was silent, and Bodie leaned forward (on the edge of his seat, he thought sardonically) for whatever came next. There’d be something; there always was when Ray wore that look on his face, the look that said that something was being shredded into scraps behind his eyes. “We’ll never really know, y’know,” Ray said.

“No,” Bodie agreed steadily. “But the chances are still pretty good that you did not kill Paul Coogan.”

“The chances aren’t so low that I didn’t. Even if all I did was finish the job that Big John started.”

Both Ray’s hands clenched into fists now, resting upon his thighs as he sat on his sofa.

“Still not your fault, Ray. Paulie took his chances and paid the odds and he lost, and it’s past time for you to let it go.” Bodie stood and walked across the room, and leaned down to rest one hand over Ray’s right fist. It stayed clenched under his hand and he tightened his grip, while Ray’s head stayed bent, watching the connection. “You need to do something that’ll make you forget, not keep on remembering.”

Ray’s head tilted, and he gazed sidelong at Bodie through narrowed eyes. “And what are you suggesting? Go out and hit something that’s not Coogan? Hitting was where we started. Find a bird and fuck her? If I go out and try to pull a bird I’ll just end up punching some stupid bugger in the pub, and that won’t solve anything. At least if I keep myself to myself I won’t be doing any harm.”

Bodie crouched, one hand still on Ray’s. “You don’t have to keep yourself to yourself.”

“Yeah, I can see you here offering to save the rest of London from me,” Ray scoffed, before his face changed. Bodie raised one eyebrow, and rested his free hand across the back of Ray’s warm, strong neck. “Wondered when you’d make a move.” The scorn was gentler but not entirely gone.

Bodie grinned at that. “Expect me to make all the running, do you?”

“No,” was all Ray said, and his hands cradled Bodie’s jaw; the rest of him followed into Bodie’s space and he laid a kiss upon his mouth. It was short, barely a hint of tongue slicking along Bodie’s lips but fierce, a warning shot fired over the bows. Bodie stood and hauled Ray up with him, so that they both stood very close, touching without any excuse of forced proximity. “Why now?” Ray asked.

“To everything there is a season?” Bodie suggested, letting his hands roam free along the small of Ray’s back and down to his arse.

Ray smiled at that, bright and unexpectedly joyous. “Think I like this season,” he said and pulled Bodie’s jersey over his head. Bodie co-operated, co-operated also with the haul on his t-shirt and vest.

“More layers on you than an arthritic granny,” Ray said, turning to lead the way to his bedroom, and shedding his shirt along the way.

“I’ve got a delicate chest,” Bodie told him, just to hear the laugh.

Ray put on the bedside lamp and then kicked off his shoes and dropped his jeans. Bodie’s mouth went dry, and a rush of heat ran over him.

“Not a blushing virgin, are you?”

Ray turned, naked and beautiful and half-hard already. “We dropped enough hints to get to this. I don’t see any point in playing around. Get the rest of your gear off and come here.” He neatly sat himself upon the bed, leaning up against the headboard and staring at Bodie with an anticipatory air. “What are you up for?”

“Well, I don’t think I’d want to go all the way on the first date.” Bodie camped it up, but Ray looked at him and saw the truth underneath the joke. He was good at that, was Ray.

“Gives us enough options. You’re always telling me you’re good with your hands. Gonna give me something else to think about, are you?”

Bodie had shed the rest of his own clothes through this, and he climbed onto the bed and knelt beside Ray. He’d seen all of this before, in locker rooms, in shared hotel bedrooms, but never like this, never with licence to look as much he liked, and to take whatever he could.

“That’s the plan, sunshine,” he said, and put his hands on his partner in an entirely new way.

~*~  
An early morning call to Cowley’s office boded as much good as it ever did. “Bodie. Doyle,” he said. There was a cup of tea on his desk, and a man sitting in the one of the more comfortable chairs that Cowley’s office featured, genteelly holding a cuppa of his own.

“This is Gerald Lidington, who is associated with the Ministry of Defence. He’s requested my assistance in a matter which requires extreme discretion. I have assured him of our capability in this matter.”

Bodie lifted one eyebrow, genuinely surprised. “What, the MOD doesn’t have enough discreet investigation agencies of their own?”

“The investigation has become stalled, and we’ve been approached. Different perspectives, additional resources,” Cowley replied, and primly took a sip of his tea before he gestured with an open hand towards Lidington. “Gerald…” ‘Gerald’, Bodie noted. Different perspectives, additional resources, and a chummy chat in someone’s club, he didn’t doubt. The old man must know the underwear size of half the mandarins of Whitehall by now.

Lidington shifted in his chair. He had thinning hair, a slight paunch and a shrewd expression, counterpart to Cowley except that his hair was dark without any trace of grey, and lightly scented with Brylcreem. “We’ve lost one of our Porton Down scientists. There’s rather a flap about it, as you might expect.”

“So why us?” Ray asked. “Anybody might have him by now.”

“Well, that’s just it. We don’t think anyone has him. We think that he’s done a bunk. Not defected, not sold out, just gone to ground. There was an incident, and this chap was already noted as highly strung. A very talented researcher but not one of your stoic sorts.”

“And what sort of incident at Porton Down might send someone not very stoic to ground, Mr Lidington?” Ray said it with silken courtesy but immediately Bodie was on alert, and so was Cowley, eagle-eyed across the rim of his cup.

“That’s really not your concern, Mr Doyle,” Lidington said. “Suffice it to say that Saunders has taken himself off on an impromptu holiday and we really would like some assurance that all is in order with him, but without extra activity to alert anyone who might observe more usual channels. And since we presume, at this point, that his disappearance is not a matter of espionage, it seemed to me that someone with a more civilian approach and knowledge might be found among George’s lads, but with the reliability and skills needed if things were discovered to be… not so civilian.”

“Gerald has provided me with background information,” said Cowley, with a nod at Lidington. “You will familiarise yourself with it, ask any necessary questions and then begin an investigation.”

“Just like that,” Bodie said, with a tilt of his head towards Ray, who grinned.

“Yes, Bodie, just like that. Use the small meeting room upstairs for your review, and bring everything back here when you’re done.” Cowley pushed a depressingly slim file across his desk and Bodie stood and picked it up.

“I’ll protect the paperwork,” Bodie said to Ray. “You can grab the tea.” He nodded towards Cowley and his guest. “Sir. Mr Lidington.”

Ray nodded also, but was silent. No farewell to his superior, no protest at being relegated to tea lady.

Out in the corridor, Bodie paused and said quietly. “I wonder how many MOD squad boys are checking out the non-civilian options just in case.”

“A few, I imagine.” Ray shook his head. “Just in case he’s not hiding in a Bermondsey bedsit with a bottle of gin to drown whatever his sorrows are. And if you want your bloody tea you can get it yourself.”

Bodie tucked the file under one arm, and made a direct line for the breakroom. “You’re a hard man, Doyle.”

“Yeah, so I’ve been told,” Ray said from behind him, and a little spike of pleasure in Bodie’s groin was equal to the irritation that Ray wanted to play pointed games in HQ.

“Focus, Raymond,” he said over his shoulder.

“You focus. On getting your own tea,” was all Ray said.

Tea accomplished they took over the upstairs meeting room. Ray swiftly unhooked the papers from the file. “Here, take a look at our quarry,” he said, shoving a black and white headshot across the table. Bodie spared a moment to admire Ray’s hands, skilled and competent. Who needs to focus now, he asked himself and took up the photograph. It showed a man somewhere in his thirties with a shock of dark hair. He was good-looking in a big-eyed, boyish way, despite the wrinkles beginning to show on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes.

“This is never from his MOD identity card. His mother’s pride, this is,” said Bodie, turning it over to note the photographer’s mark on the back.

“Yeah, well, she’s got a doctor for a son. Probably has one just like this sitting in a silver frame on the china cabinet where all her friends will see it.” Ray sniffed. “Wonder what he tells her he’s researching.”

“Wouldn’t need to say a word, would he? She can just say that it’s ‘classified’ over the tea cups. Give the gels a thrill.” He read the background check that the MOD had performed. “Get it out of your system, now, and then we can get some serious work done.”

Ray glared across the table but didn’t try to pretend he didn’t know what Bodie meant. Bodie smiled. He could do encouraging and irritating together – it was mixture that seemed to appeal to Ray. “Come on, mate. It’s not like I didn’t notice you getting aggressively polite with Lidington. The Cow gave you the gimlet stare, too.”

“Ah, what’s the point?” Ray said. “He needs to be found, and if they thought he was going to wave canisters of VX about we’d have seen neither hide nor hair of this business.”

“Doesn’t have to be anything to do with that,” Bodie said quietly.

“He’s a research doctor at Porton fucking Down, Bodie. He’s not looking for a cure for cancer nine to five, now is he?”

“True,” Bodie said with a show of judiciousness. “Could be germ warfare instead.”

That got him a mini-explosion. “It’s not bloody funny!”

“It never is in this job. Why’s this getting your knickers in a knot?”

“I don’t know.” Ray shifted in his seat and patted the holster at his shoulder. “This thing seems pretty useless sometimes. Given what we’re up against. We try to keep things safe, and the powers that be just create more nasties to trickle down into criminal hands.”

“Well, let’s just confirm that there’s no trickling going on with the good Doctor Simon Saunders. Have they got any bank statements there? Phone records?”

Ray began sorting through the papers, and Bodie stood to adjust the blinds, and in passing squeezed Ray’s shoulders. It wasn’t a gesture made often, even in private; Ray stilled for a moment and then returned to his study of the file. 

Ray in a condition of angst always bothered Bodie in more ways than one. Ray believing in the value of his job meant a steady state, the two of them working together comfortably, for so long as they might. Bodie knew that one day the daily round of mind-numbing boredom and gut-roiling fear would change. One of them would get sick of the job, or would find a better opportunity (would be hurt or worse, a quiet voice would occasionally murmur in his deepest heart), but not today. For today, they’d look for the MOD’s lost lamb.

~*~

Doctor Saunders had a pied-a-terre in Amesbury, and a more substantial and dusty flat in London. Both were investigated in company with a man called Powell who was apparently Saunders’ immediate superior. Saunders was the only child of older parents who’d lived in London from the mid-nineteen fifties onward. He’d enjoyed a steady, capable academic career crowned with a Bachelor of Medicine from Barts. Barts, along with a dizzying list of other hospitals, had no record of treating Simon Saunders, and there were no unidentified sick or injured men, or nameless bodies that met Saunders’ description. The registration of Saunders’ car hadn’t popped up on record either and it was time for a careful review of Saunders’ London home and papers. 

Ray had sat himself on the floor, his back to the seat of a plush sofa, with a small box of Christmas cards, some filed with their envelopes, some not. He was neatly adding his ticks to a list of known contacts that had already been seen by and annotated by MOD investigators. Despite this, he sat sprawled there, his face patient and careful, while Bodie checked Saunders’ disorganised file box of bills and receipts.

“Well, he never goes on bloody holiday – or if he does it’s cash all the way,” Bodie said. “Not so much as a day trip. Very devoted.”

Ray looked up from his perusal of season’s greetings. “Maybe if he’d taken a break he might have had more resources when he fell into his bit of trouble. And maybe we’d have better luck figuring out where he might have taken himself off to if we knew a bit more about the nature of his trouble.”

Powell looked uncomfortable – he’d looked uncomfortable ever since they’d entered Saunders’ flat, which was clearly something Not Done, especially by someone like Ray or Bodie, but he held his ground. “I don’t see that knowing anything other than that Dr Saunders was distressed will be any use to you.”

“Anyone would think they didn’t want him to be found,” Bodie drawled, purposely rounding out his vowels. He appreciated the value of being well-spoken, but Powell’s plummily-spoken discomfort caught him on the raw. “Just a bit of set-dressing, are we?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Powell’s face flushed. “Of course we want him found,” he snapped. “I don’t think anyone appreciated how easy it is to just disappear.”

“Regrettably, yeah,” Ray said, softer in his look now, the good copper rather than the stern judge. “Look, I appreciate that you can’t give away State secrets, but what sort of incident are we talking about here?”

“There was an accident,” Powell said with stiff dignity. “Dr Saunders felt responsible.”

“Was he responsible?” Bodie asked.

“Events arose out of his recommendations. He was responsible in that sense.”

Bodie put his share of the paperwork back into the file whence it came. He hoped that if Saunders was found that he would appreciate Bodie’s filing system.

“All this secrecy is making my imagination run amok. Maybe he tried to create the perfect royal tipple and nearly poisoned the Queen Mum with dodgy Dubonnet.” Powell winced and Bodie amused himself with wondering if it was because of the offence to the dignity of Her Majesty or Powell’s very important science work.

Ray looked at him with affectionate contempt. “Poisoned Dubonnet would at least open a whole new line of investigation, which is what we bloody need here. Feels like we’re just going over the same ground ad infinitum.” He tugged at his hair in frustration.

“So what next, sunshine?”

Ray thrust a small handful of cards at Powell. “Can you identify any of the names in these? Everyone else checks out.”

Powell looked them over swiftly, and shook his head. “I didn’t know him that well. As Mr Bodie put it, he was… devoted. He didn’t discuss his private life much.”

“Then we’d better check out some more of his private life, then. What about dear old Mum?”

“She hasn’t been able to help us.” 

“Well, that will be because you haven’t applied the thumbscrews yet,” Bodie said heartily.

Powell’s lips thinned. So did Ray’s, in a grin, but he smoothed his face into professional courtesy and suggested, “We still need to talk to her. We’d be remiss if we didn’t, given the circumstances. Bugging her phone, are you?”

“She’s agreed to be monitored, yes. But there’s been no communication, and even if there is… you chaps will know the difficulty of tracing calls.”

“Yeah, we know,” Bodie said. “But since we don’t want to be remiss, let’s go chat with the good Mrs Saunders, eh?”

~*~  
Nancy Saunders had news for them. Small and plump and with her white hair helmeted into place with spray, she greeted them at the door with fluttery distress.

“He’s called me,” she declared, as soon as she’d ushered them into her little living room, which was furnished in a style that would have been tasteful thirty years ago. “That’s good news, surely?”

“Indeed it is,” Powell said, but without great enthusiasm. “I take it that he didn’t tell you where he is.”

“No, sadly.” She clasped her hands anxiously in her lap. “You won’t be able to tell… from your equipment?” There was something in the tone of her voice there, wariness rather than hope, that made Ray and Bodie share a look. Powell didn’t seem to notice.

“We’ll enquire, but it’s my understanding that it takes a bit of time. We did suggest that you do your best to keep him talking, you remember?”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs Saunders said, a touch flustered. “But he didn’t really want to talk to me, just wanted to let me know that he was all right, he told me he knew that you must have been in contact with me, and he didn’t want me to worry. And now I know that Simon’s all right, and I’m not worried, and you gentlemen don’t have to be either.” She spoke with brittle, relentless cheer.

Powell sighed. “We’re delighted to know that Simon’s been in contact with you – but it’s not proof that he’s safe or well, you know.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s good enough for me to know that he thought to call me.” The brittle cheer had cracked dangerously close to tears, and Bodie wondered how heavily the MOD boys had emphasised the importance of finding her son.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Powell said, somewhat helplessly. “You have kept this quiet, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes, of course. I don’t want to risk my boy.” Fluster was turning into irritation. “Truly, I don’t know where Simon is. I can’t help you, and if it’s so important that you find him, then surely you have far more resources than I do.” Her eyes flicked over first Ray and then Bodie, a touch uncertain. And Ray in a proper shirt and his nicer jacket too, even if he’d decided a tie was unnecessary. Bodie smiled at her, his most reassuring ‘I always stop for kiddies at zebra crossings’ smile. 

“Given that you’ve told us that Mrs Saunders very kindly agreed to have her telephone monitored,” he said to Powell, “perhaps your boys will want to let us know a few pertinent details.”

Powell leapt at the chance to make his escape from Mrs Saunders’ surprisingly resentful gaze. “A grand idea. Let’s not bother Mrs Saunders any further.” They left, and Powell led the way to a van parked out on the street.

“Tedious woman. We’d rather not have involved her, but apparently Simon missed a lunch appointment with her and she got the wind up, probably told half the neighbourhood he’s missing. We already knew he was gone - we follow up work absences rather closely, as you might imagine.”

“Broke into his Amesbury flat to make sure he hadn’t done away with himself, I take it?” Ray said it just smoothly enough to make it sound a reasonable question.

“Quite,” Powell said dryly. Bodie repressed a grin – he got the feeling that Powell thought he was getting the measure of Ray Doyle. More fool he if he trusted that intuition.

Inside the van was a doleful and rather tired-looking man of about twenty-five.

“Well-timed,” he said. “I wondered when someone would show up."

Introductions were made. Powell sat in the front, Bodie and Ray crammed themselves into the back of the van. 

“It was far too short a call to make any useful trace. We know that he’s north of London, but whether we’re talking St Albans or Glasgow is open to debate.”

“It’s a start,” said Powell from over the seat. 

The three men in the back all shared a look, and the young man, Williams, played the recording of the call for them.

_“Hello?”_

_“Hello, Mummy.”_

_“Simon! Oh, Simon, where have you been?”_

_“Just out and about, Mummy. Don’t worry about me. Tell everyone I didn’t mean to scare them, I know they’re worried and probably badgering you, but I’m quite all right.”_

_“Simon, please…”_

_“No, don’t! Really, I’m sorry, but I just need some time. I just want to be left alone a while.”_

_“Simon, please, just come home, my dear.”_

The call ended.

“He’s been gone, what, a week?” Ray was frowning, thinking hard.

“He sounds at the end of his tether, doesn’t he?” Bodie sought inspiration in the wall of the van, the banks of electronics, and the curve and heat of Ray’s leg pressed against him in the close quarters. “Why wait that long to contact his mother? He must have known that she’d be worried.”

“It’s a mystery,” Ray said.

The mystery was unfurled no further over the course of the day. They did their share of a small-hours stakeout and staggered home to Bodie’s for strong tea and cheese on toast for breakfast.

“I suppose that your mouth is just big enough to fit around those slabs.” Ray sliced cheese with a generous hand.

“I will at least be getting a mouthful of Hovis’s best, instead of a science experiment.”

Ray waved his knife at Bodie in joke-belligerence. “Once. Once I don’t have time in our busy schedules to get some food in and you never bloody let me forget it. Gannet.”

Bodie put the food under the grill.

“Want to kip here after breakfast before we return to the mystery of the disappearing doctor?”

“Kip. Is that what it’s called, is it?”

“It’s not obligatory, but it’s more convenient.” Bodie lifted his eyebrows in invitation; it was his own stupid fault he was reminded of Kathy Mason and Ray with a laser sight on him, and fancied keeping Ray near as a result. Close calls galore in this job, but compensations too: London; cheese on toast, which was one of civilisation’s delicacies, so far as Bodie was concerned; Ray Doyle in his bed.

They ate breakfast, and Bodie expounded on the glories of cheese on toast. Ray gave him an unbelieving stare. “I dunno, sunshine. You like good shoes, posh shaving gear, and now you’re waxing delirious about cheese on bloody toast. I’d have thought a man with your way with a wine list would be more impressed by champagne.

“Well, it’s related,” Bodie conceded. “It’s all fermentation, and time. When you have civilisation, you have time. Continuity. You can grow grain, and build a decent oven and discover yeast, and mould. And then combine them – just the right level of crispiness when you toast the bread. Just the right coverage of the cheese.”

“So why not a nice baguette and some camembert?” Ray continued, dogged and amused.

“Merely the Frenchified version of the same idea. A nice cheddar – or some mozzarella if you insist on being continental – does the job. Good British Hovis delivered to a good British supermarket. Civilisation.”

“You can talk an amazing load of bollocks when you’ve been up all night,” was all Ray said, but he seemed especially appreciative of the last piece of cheese on toast that he nicked off the plate.

They got into a silly, giggling fight about the most artistic way to arrange the blanket and pillow on the couch that Ray would supposedly be sleeping on. That little subterfuge had become second nature, and the ultimate rumpled mess looked convincing enough. They lay together naked and got each other off with their hands, a sleepy, gentle wank that dropped Ray off into sleep almost straight after. Bodie managed to stay awake a little longer, long enough to see Ray’s face soften with sleep and the diffused morning light. He didn’t look young like that, more ageless, like one of the stricter angels in a painting. Then he turned on his side, his face mashed into the pillow, human and ugly, and frankly far more desirable that way. Angels, Bodie thought, weren’t suitable for the likes of him; he slept.

The alarm was set for noon, and lunch was pulled together out of tins. A pub lunch had tempted them both, but the urge to review the MOD business was strong and the privacy of Bodie’s flat seemed best.

“Funny business all round, Saunders,” Bodie said over his baked beans. “I wonder if he would have been edged out of his position for instability. I don’t fancy the idea of a delicate mental type handling nerve gas or super plague or whatever they play with down there. He must have been showing the signs or they wouldn’t have been so sure that he hadn’t defected.”

“Eastern bloc wouldn’t want him anyway. Rumour has it, only rumour of course, that the Russkies are leading the charge in the mess that’s non-conventional warfare.”

“Doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t want him just to give two fingers to dear old Blighty, now, does it?” Bodie took a sip of tea, savouring it. He liked it strong. “You know a lot about the subject, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well, we all have our bête noirs. I read a few of the wrong papers – research for the job. Gotta be up with political viewpoints that might lead to trouble, after all.”

“Oh, that’s why I see the occasional Guardian. I wondered.”

“Berk,” was Ray’s only comment. “But I’m not surprised they want him back pronto even if he’s just having a nervous breakdown.” There was ironic emphasis on the ‘just’. “Who knows what an unstable scientist might do?"

“Kill himself and take valuable secrets with him?” Bodie suggested wryly.

“He could do worse,” said Ray. “He could talk to the press.” 

Bodie considered the panic that would create in Whitehall. “They’d pop him somewhere like Repton, permanently, and burn down Fleet Street before they let that happen.”

“Yeah. So how do we save ourselves from the next Great Fire of London?”

“Did you get a funny feeling off the mother?”

Ray smiled, a slow, pleased smile. “Great minds think alike? We’ll make a copper out of you yet.”

“Perish the thought.”

“You’ll come round. The question is, will Mrs Saunders, and if she does, will it be any use to us.”

“Only one way to find out. The old man is still willing to give us some time and leeway for this.’’

Ray shrugged into his jacket, a movement beautiful in both economy and sensuality. “Yeah. It’s a pretty picture of establishment connections and favours, innit?”

“Forget the cynicism, Doyle. Let’s go interrogate the Widow Saunders.”

Mrs Saunders almost recoiled when she saw them on her doorstep. Bodie led the charge into her living room with a patient display of delicate but inexorable civility. He’d found it the best way to deal with uppish old bints like this one. She gave way against them, but Bodie had the distinct feeling that she considered Ray in his jeans and t-shirts altogether too vital and sexual for a proper civil servant. She wouldn’t know what to do with her dreams when they were gone, no doubt. Bodie having corralled her, he let Constable Doyle ask the questions. They produced tears and a trembling voice.

“I don’t see why you can’t just leave him alone!”

“Mrs Saunders,” Ray said with careful control, “just one more time. Even if your son is safe, even if you know that, we don’t. Not really. People that he’s responsible to don’t know. And if he’s distressed, as you suggest, then it’s not good for him to be alone right now.” The same arguments, the same tune sung with new words, but Bodie shared Ray’s instinct. There was something that she did know, and didn’t want to share.

Mrs Saunders kept playing with her handkerchief, picking at it, rolling it between her palms and unrolling it. Bodie would cheerfully have strangled her with it. Bugger the nation, he thought to himself, Mummy’s little darling needs to have his tantrum to himself.

“He’d been distressed, because...” she heaved a deep, trembling sigh. “He was adopted, you see. My husband and I – I was a few years older than him, just a few, but we couldn’t have children. One of those things. My husband was a doctor, not something high-powered like Simon, just an ordinary GP, and he had a friend, they’d gone to medical school together, and he let Roger know that there was a young woman who needed a family for a baby. Well, we were delighted.”

“None of this was in the file we had on Doctor Saunders.” 

“Well, it was done unofficially, as an informal, private arrangement. It was still common enough back then, and nobody wanted anything that would attach any more shame to the young woman. Well, just a school girl really, from a decent family that was hideously distressed by it all; anyone would be.” She shifted during this speech as if uncomfortably in a spotlight, and Bodie wondered how much some research into the law of the land might back up her assumption that it was still ‘common enough’ once upon a time.

The light of an idea broke over Ray’s face. “Was she in communication with him? His natural mother. Christmas cards and all that?”

Her spine stiffened, as if Ray had accused her precious son of some terrible crime, but then she deflated. “She approached him first – I never knew how she tracked him down, and he didn’t want to discuss that with me. He was very… shocked, I think. His work was stressful, and if she’d just left him alone, I’m sure that things would have been quite different.”

Bodie broke in. “Would he have approached her? Maybe chosen to stay with her?”

She sat frozen in her chair, looking somewhere inwards. Finally, reluctantly, she said, “I suppose anything is possible.”

“Where is she?” Bodie asked.

“Somewhere in Yorkshire.”

“Somewhere?”

“We drove there. We weren’t in London of course, not then. We weren’t going to see them ever again, and Roger drove. It’s not like I needed to memorise the address. I trained as a nurse, I _delivered_ Simon, he’s my son” –she was in full-blown tears now- “and I know he’s gone to her. I know it!”

Ray and Bodie exchanged uncomfortable looks, before Ray stood and patted her on the shoulder. “What was the name of Simon’s birth mother, Mrs Saunders?”

Bodie decided that this was a good moment to find Mrs Saunders’s kitchen and put the kettle on. By the time he’d popped his head around the corner to ask whether she wanted milk or sugar she was calmer, and Ray stood by with a triumph that might have been concealed from the miserable woman in the armchair, but was perfectly plain to Bodie.

“Cup of tea, Mrs Saunders?”

She looked up. “Oh yes, thank you. I take milk.”

They left her to her cup of tea and sodden handkerchief. Bodie pulled away from the curb and said, “Please don’t tell me that the name of our mystery woman is Smith.”

Ray grinned. “Her name is Martha Ratchford. Even if she’s married since, how many of those can there be?”

“Not too many I’d have thought. Let’s bear our booty back in triumph to the nice gals in the computer suite, eh?”

“The Cow’ll be happy. His fine lads come through again. The old bastard might even offer us a drink.”

“Ach, laddie, for a pedestrian piece of detective work like that?”

“Yeah, well, let’s cap off our pedestrian bit of work with a bit of pedestrian delivery.”

Bodie looked askance at this. He was perfectly happy to rub another agency’s nose in their success, but potential long drives into the northern wilds were really not his preferred entertainment, and he knew that too much of Ray’s determination came out of that quiet brood about why Saunders had made his great escape. 

His doubt was clear on his face and Ray looked scathing. “Come on. You’re telling me you don’t want to stand there and see their faces when we hand him over? Get the upper hand in the Great Game of interagency co-operation?”

“Maybe, but I can live without the sweet smell of the countryside,” Bodie said. “I’ve found I prefer the city life myself.”

“But you’ll have the pleasure of my company, mate.”

“I can have that without eau-de-pig shit, Doyle.”

“Might not be pigs. Might be cows, or sheep. She might live in a nice little town these days. I’ll even let you drive.”

“Let you sleep, you mean.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“I’m beginning to think so.” But the complaint was half-hearted at best.

~*~  
Ray had a couple of folded maps gripped in his hands and he unfolded one, spreading it out across the front of the dashboard.

“We’re going with the Martha Ratchford who’s fifty rather than the one who’s ninety-three, I take it?” Bodie asked, driving the Capri out of the garage yard.

“Oh, I think so,” Ray answered sunnily. “Seems just a little more likely, not that I’m claiming maths is my strong point.” He gave Bodie a look that dared him to enumerate some of those strong points, and Bodie indulged himself with a quick, hard squeeze to Ray’s knee before he concentrated on the London traffic. 

“Where the hell is she? Just how many miles off the A1 are we going to be trekking, anyway?”

“Give me a moment to work it out, and then I’ll navigate you once we’re off the exit.” He made a couple of marks with a pencil, wrote something illegible on the side of the map and then folded it once more. “Right, you’re going off at Doncaster. I presume you can read the signs. And you can wake me up when you spot the exit.”

“Oh, I’ll wake you up all right.”

“Good lad,” Ray murmured, and leaned the car seat back a little further.

Bodie shook his head, but his look of exasperated affection was wasted. Ray might not yet be asleep, but he was shut-eyed and his body looked as loose as a piece of string. Bodie shot up the motorway, surprisingly happy despite his misgivings. He was driving one of his favourite cars. They’d nearly finished a job and despite Bodie’s impatience with Ray’s ‘bête noir’, he was most certainly not above CI5 putting one over another department. Ray was sleeping quietly beside him. Of such things were good days made.

He gave Ray an ungentle prod when they approached their exit. “Wakey, wakey, darling. Time to rise and shine and navigate.”

Ray had the gift of being quickly alert out of sleep, and he sat up in his seat only a little flushed from his rest, and looking bright-eyed and well-satisfied. “That was fast,” he said, goading Bodie in his turn.

“Some of us do know what to do with a car. Where’s my turn along here?”

“Second right,” Ray said absently. “And then straight through the roundabout.”

“And round and round the mulberry bush, I take it?”

Their route took them onto quiet, narrow country roads, and even Bodie was forced to acknowledge some need for caution around the corners.

“Here we are. Howe Farm.” Bodie turned off, and it was another hundred yards or so before they came out into the open yard of a modest-sized farm house and its outbuildings. It was all neat enough – the paint on the doors and window frames was tidy, and there were flowers still blooming under the grey autumnal sky. Everything was the picture of rural order except for the very urban late model Jaguar sheltering in an open shed.

“You take the front, I’ll take the back?” Ray asked, and Bodie nodded.

“Careful how you go. If this is as nicely civilian as we hope, we don’t want to put the hens off laying.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Ray murmured and slipped from the car. Ray was barely out of Bodie’s sight as he made his way around the side when there was a bellow of his name. Bodie abandoned the approach to the front door and sprinted around the side of the house, to see Ray in pursuit of a man who, from his back view at least, certainly looked like their lost MOD scientist. The running man scrambled over a fence with frantic haste. It slowed him only a little, and he scattered sheep in his pell-mell dash.

Ray dealt with the fence just as speedily and more gracefully while Bodie followed in their wake across the farmhouse yard. In endurance Bodie could give Ray a run for his money any time, but in the sprints Ray would always win. Not that this was much of a sprint. Their quarry had put on good speed in the first flush of fear but he was flagging and Ray was gaining fast. Bodie cleared the fence and kept on, complaining sheep beginning to gather in two groups either side of their wake.

Ray tackled the running man and he fell with a noise horribly like the shriek of a rabbit in the jaws of a fox. He kept yelling, and flailed in Ray’s grip like a mad thing.

“Damn it, calm down," Ray gasped. “Bloody – fucking – hell!” The two of them grappled while Bodie stood by and then took his chance to enter the maelstrom as one arm flew free.

He took a firm grip with a painful hold and said encouragingly, “Take a couple of breaths, there’s a good chap.”

The man calmed, or at least grew less frenzied. His breathing stayed at extremes, great gasps heaving in and out of his mouth. It was indeed Simon Saunders. 

"Let me, go. God, that hurts, let me go!”

It wasn’t quite a cry. Ray and Bodie exchanged looks and then Bodie experimentally let go. All was quiet, aside from Saunders’ distress. Ray also loosened his hold and sat back still astride the man. Then he stiffened, his face wary.

“Trouble,” he said, and nodded the way they’d come. Bodie turned and saw a woman approaching, not running, but striding in a business-like manner. She was thin, grey-haired and grim. She held a shotgun, also in a business-like manner, a middle-aged farming woman who’d shot her share of vermin and looked in no mood right now to make the distinction between animals and men.

“I’m always better with the ladies, Doyle,” was all Bodie said, and he stood smoothly and put himself between the shotgun and Ray.

“We’re authorised, from the Government,” he called. “We’ve been worried about Doctor Saunders and wanted to make sure he was all right.”

“And now you have, and you can let him go,” she said.

Bodie took a brief look behind him. Ray had one knee resting in the grass, his hand clapped on Saunders’ shoulder. Saunders sat huddled, his arms wrapped around his knees. Bodie thought he might be crying. In some frustration he decided that they should have brought a straitjacket as well as their guns.

“I’d like to show you my identification, Miss Ratchford.”

“As far as I’m concerned, young man, you can take your identification and shove it up your arse.” She looked past Bodie to Ray. “You. You get up and you leave him alone.”

Bodie didn’t need to look to know that Ray held his ground. “We can’t do that. Doctor Saunders’ disappearance has caused a lot of concern. We need to assure his employers that he’s safe.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt,” she said scathingly. “Those buggers in Defence will want to know that he’s not blabbing their secrets. Oh, you needn’t worry,” she said, in answer to whatever crossed Bodie’s face, “he’s not blabbed to me, except to say who he works for. But he’s in no state to go anywhere.”

A good psychiatric hospital would be a helpful destination, Bodie thought, but kept that observation locked in his head.

“Miss Ratchford, we don’t mean him harm, but we need to let people know that Doctor Saunders has been found safe.”

He could see the resignation growing in her – fuelled no doubt by the distressed noises coming from behind him. She sighed, but kept her gun aimed.

“You chuck me that identification of yours, then. No point in letting this go on if you’re a bunch of spies now, is it?”

Bodie measured out a reassuring smile. “As British as they come, I promise.” He spun the leather wallet with his ID and authority through the air, and it came to rest neatly at Martha Ratchford’s feet. She bent to pick it up, still limber, and carefully cradling her gun. Bodie was grateful for that. Nothing worse than amateurs with weapons. 

“You’ve got the same?” she called to Ray.

“That’s right,” he said.

The gun was placed at rest, the barrel released and the stock laid over her arm. “I think we’d all better go inside,” Miss Ratchford said. “Here.” She handed her gun to Bodie. “You take that, I’ll see to my boy.”

Ray stood at her approach. Saunders remained seated on the ground, which Bodie now had time to note with distaste was well covered in sheep manure. Miss Ratchford bent, her hands resting on her knees. “Come now, lad. You knew they were going to find you in the end, and here they are. Let’s go up to the house and have a cup of tea and think about what comes next, eh?”

Saunders was finally calming enough to talk. He wiped his eyes, saying softly. “Sorry, sorry, what must you think of me?”

Miss Ratchford extended one hand. “Up you come now.” It was a gentle order; Saunders stood and the two of them, hand in hand, led the way back to the house. There was a smell of cooking in the kitchen, something savoury with cheese and onion.

“Lucky I’d just taken the scones out of the oven, wasn’t it?” Miss Ratchford said wryly. She turned to Saunders. “You go upstairs and have a wash.”

“One of us will have to watch him,” Ray said, terse but civil. There was a bruise coming up on one cheek. Always harder to block the blows when you had to worry about not injuring the other party.

“You up for it?” Bodie asked.

“Leaving you in the kitchen, I suppose.” But Ray nodded. “If you don’t mind, Doctor Saunders. You’ll have to show me the way.” He gestured to a blank-eyed Saunders, who nodded, and led the way out of the room.

“You might want to take those shoes off – or scrape them anyway.” Martha Ratchford spoke just as civilly as Ray had, but Bodie didn’t miss the gentle current of malice that ran underneath, and Bodie found himself warming to the old girl. “I can get you some newspaper."

“That would be a kindness to both of us, Miss Ratchford,” said Bodie. “And what should I do with this?” He indicated the shotgun he still held.

“I’ll put it away. When I go and get that newspaper for you.”

He handed the gun over, with only one qualm. “Do you have somewhere to store it that Doctor Saunders can’t access?”

No flinch, no outrage, no teary eyes. “Kept it locked up the second day after he arrived. Not that I’m sure that he knows how to load it, but still.”

“I’ll need your phone.”

“In the hall. But you can take those shoes off first.” Bodie did so, noting that the newspaper would indeed be useful, and mourning the brown flecks that marked his trousers well up past his shins. He followed her as far as the phone, and made two calls – the first to Powell. He announced their success without a hint of gloating, gave detailed instructions on how to find the place, and finished with, “Bring someone with you who’s licensed to prescribe a good sedative. He’s in a bad state.”

His second call was to HQ. “The MOD’s mission’s accomplished, sir,” he said, once Cowley had barked directly into the phone.

“Is it now? Where is he?”

“Little spot in darkest Yorkshire. It was a guess, so Doyle and I went to check out the lead, and the lead was good. Doyle’s keeping an eye on him while we wait for MOD to do whatever they want to do, which sounds like it’ll be swooping down to take him somewhere… appropriate.”

“Went searching into the countryside did you? Very conscientious of you and Doyle, seeing a job through to the end, although the mileage claim will give the bean-counters some distress. Doyle’s idea, was it?”

“As you said, sir, it was the conscientious thing to do.” He wondered if Cowley knew of Ray’s interest in matters Porton Down-ish, and if that had argued for or against giving this job to the two of them. Never mind. There were times he preferred not to know George Cowley’s plans and schemes.

“Indeed,” Cowley said, sharp and vaporous as his favourite good malt. “I’ll wait on your report when you get back to London.”

“Yes, sir.”

Miss Ratchford had stood by through most of his conversation with Cowley. “Will there be a reimbursement for that? It’s not cheap rates right now.”

She wanted her money back, he didn’t doubt, but he recognised the urge to keep the upper hand as well. “You and my partner would get along well,” Bodie said easily.

“Is that a fact?” she said. “I’ve not seen much yet to recommend either of you, but that’s circumstances for you, I suppose.” She softened slightly. “I’ll make some tea.” 

She made the tea, in an enormous brown stoneware pot that could have poured for an army. “I’ll take it up to the ones upstairs, shall I? I want to check that Simon is all right.”

“Doyle will keep an eye on him.”

“Make sure he doesn’t run before the rest of the Government arrives, you mean. I want to see Simon, given that he’ll be going soon. They’ll drive up from London?"

“I expect so.”

“Well then.”

She took long enough for Bodie to have finished most of his tea, not envying Ray either of his companions, but not sorry enough for him to abandon the comfort of the kitchen. When she came down she had a bundle wrapped in newspaper. “Your friend’s shoes. Probably too late for my floor, but never mind.” She placed them by the outer door and then sat down at her kitchen table with a sigh. “I expected you here sooner, to be honest.”

Bodie shrugged. “Your relationship with Doctor Saunders was a well-kept secret.”

“Oh, then she didn’t bleat straightaway, did she? I’m surprised. Thought she’d want her precious boy away from me.”

Bodie was beginning to suspect that he’d have been better off with Ray.

“I remember her. Gentle with her hands, but you could tell she didn’t think much of me. Very ‘yes, Doctor; no, Doctor’. Wonder what she’d have thought if she’d known he was the boy’s dad.”

“Which doctor?” Bodie asked, at sea for a moment and thinking that she meant Mrs Saunders’ husband. Then understanding came. She meant the Saunders’ friend, the local doctor who’d been good enough to ‘arrange’ the adoption. “Bloody hell. You were just a kid, and how old was he?”

“Forty-six, and even then I thought the sun shone out of him. He was another one with gentle hands. Didn’t have the sense to hate his guts until I was past eighteen and he’d moved on somewhere else. Very neat for him to have his bastard looked after by his good friends.” She looked at her clenched hands. “But I shouldn’t talk so about the boy. It’s not his fault.”

“Does he know? Your son?”

“My son.” She stared across the kitchen. “No, I said it was a local man and that he was dead now. Simon can count as well as anyone. He knows I wasn’t much more than a baby myself. I might have told him the whole story, if he was in a different state.”

“Fifteen, Mrs Saunders said.”

“Barely. Fourteen when I got caught. My poor parents, they loved me but it was the war and they were working all hours, and I was a dreamy fool who thought that Doctor making a fuss over me made me special. So pleased they were when he came up with his grand plan, and me nodding along because I didn’t know any better.”

Bodie thought of when he was fourteen and willing to take any old shit in return for what he thought was acceptance and approval. He wondered idly if she’d stayed here out of love for the place or because she thought there was nowhere else to go. So far as Bodie was concerned, there was always somewhere else, unless you were staying out of love or loyalty, and he hadn’t stayed often for either reason. “Live and learn,” he said gravely.

“I try,” she said and sighed. “I’m not stupid. He came here because he knew I wouldn’t turn him away and it’d be harder to track him down. I’m not his sort and I know he wouldn’t have said much about me.” She fixed Bodie with a look. “You’d best look after those shoes.”

“True enough,” Bodie said, and took up the shoes and the materials provided. There was a while yet before the MOD boys arrived, and there were clearly not going to be any scones on offer.

~*~  
“There is a distinct whiff of farmyard in this car,” Bodie said. Simon Saunders had been handed over to the mercies of the MOD, and Bodie had the wheel once more for the return to London. He liked to drive, and Ray apparently had no complaint about lounging in the passenger’s seat.

“Yeah, gonna have to pay my drycleaners dirt money,” Ray said. He was quiet, contemplative, but Bodie found himself unsettled and unsure why, except for a lingering distaste for the sordid little story he’d heard in Martha Ratchford’s kitchen.

“Leave it all to dry and the worst of it will brush off. Save yourself some money.”

“Handy-hints Bodie,” Ray said, but it was without bite. 

Saunders had been calm enough when the MOD men arrived and Bodie had been relieved – he hadn’t fancied another scene like the one in the pasture. He fiddled with the settings on the heater and its fan, and then lowered the side window a crack. “All right for some, isn't it? Two mummies to go running to.” If Bodie wanted to go running to Mum he’d have to camp out in Toxteth Cemetery, these days, and there was no nostalgia or fondness that would encourage that as a daydream.

“Dunno, mate. Sounds like an embarrassment of riches to me.” Something hard to interpret rose in Ray’s face, but not the contempt that Bodie might have expected from the words.

“It got a bit true confessions down in the kitchen. What about you? He was quiet enough when I came up to see you.”

“Me? They’ll have to give us our own personal ‘D’ notices to hang around our necks, mate. He got quite chatty – told me all about it. They were ready to test some drug to treat nerve gas poison, very noble, I’m sure, and it was time to try it out on a human subject.”

“I have a strange premonition that I know how this story is going to end,” Bodie said sourly.

“Yeah. Not a success. It worked on the rats. He kept repeating that, over and over. It worked on the rats.”

“Christ.”

Ray put his hand on Bodie’s knee, nothing like Bodie’s playful, possessive squeeze on their way north. It was weary, a purely human contact rather than something sexual, but it put a shiver through Bodie anyway. “Want to come back to my place? After we write our report?”

“Depends. Do you have food in?”

“Yes, I found my way to a supermarket. The joys of civilisation.” Ray grinned at that, and Bodie grinned back. The joys of civilisation kept him focused through the night-time drive back to London and Cowley, who was still in his office despite the lateness of the hour and expressed measured satisfaction with a successful outcome. They were graciously permitted to be off-shift, so long as they provided a written report before they left.

Their late supper was something with cheese and pasta and too much tomato, and all of the beer in Ray’s fridge, which dismayed Bodie even though he knew Ray had a high alcohol tolerance. Ray was always a passionate, opinionated drunk, and whether he was cheerful or bad-tempered about it depended on his state of mind before he drank his booze. The conversation ran all too soon to speculation about Saunders. Ray took the last gulps from his tin and crushed it, pressing it flat with the strength of his fingers like some metal origami, and laid the detritus on the floor.

“Poor stupid bastard. Killed someone and couldn’t take it.”

“Not everyone can take it,” Bodie said, reckless on a full stomach and some lager. “Not even for a good cause.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Is it for a good cause? Him or us? How many people have we killed?”

“None where we had any choice in the matter.” Bodie leaned forward in his chair. “So poor old Saunders learned that scientific rigor isn’t the be-all-and-end-all. I’d have thought you’d be pleased that a few more people get to see that life and death isn’t all abstraction and statistics in a Cabinet report.”

“Is that what you see? That it’s not all statistics?” Ray’s eyes were brightly belligerent, and Bodie was suddenly glad that Ray hadn’t been in the inquiry room when Geraldine Mather was gutting and filleting his past. Ray had queried Bodie’s history before, he knew it had its pools of murk, but Bodie didn’t want Ray in this mood totting up the corpses that could be laid at Bodie’s feet.

“Yeah, well, any man’s death diminishes me. Like the poet says,” Bodie said, uncomfortable with just enough booze and a difficult truth.

“For I am involved in mankind,” Ray said, and then snapped, “You’re not the only one who knows a poem or two, Bodie, especially that one. Half the bloody kids in England do, I’d have thought. I just wish that big chunks of mankind weren’t so intent on dropping an A-bomb or poison all over the place. If you and I have got to do the rubbish jobs, it’s nice to think that there’d be something there to show for it.”

“Oh, give over on the doom and gloom, Doyle. We follow our orders and hope for the best. What good did it ever do getting maudlin into your beer?”

“I’m not fucking maudlin. Just because I don’t like being reminded that a bunch of higher-ups no better than you or me or anyone else on the street can wipe everything out just like that. Where’d your bloody cheese on toast be if that happened, then?”

It took Bodie a moment to remember what Ray was talking about, and Ray, not that drunk but volatile with it, was moved to sharp, mocking laughter at Bodie’s confusion. Bodie stood, feeling belligerent himself and not trusting the feeling with Ray. He liked his violence channelled at targets he could justify.

“Right, I’ll be off,” he said. “Those trousers should be dry enough to brush the shit off them by now.”

“I thought you were staying,” Ray said, disagreeable but surprised. They cut close to the bone with each other often enough, and he was confused why this time he’d offended.

“I’ve had enough dissection,” Bodie said, thinking of Mather and her clipped, contemptuous questions. He hoped that Ray would finally let that whole episode go, for his own sake, and because Bodie never enjoyed being reminded of times he was made to feel a fool.

“Wasn’t dissecting you. When did you turn into a moody bastard?” Ray followed him to stand very close, a frown on his face.

“Why? Have you got a monopoly on it?” Bodie asked.

“Who said…?” Ray shook his head. “All right, message received. Not even you can listen to a broken record all the time. But stay.”

“Stay?”

“You’ve been giving me the eye often enough the last few days. And,” he shrugged, “I wouldn’t mind the company, even if I’m apparently bad company right now. I have to be better than your bloody clothes brush,” he said with a sour grin.

“The clothes brush is quiet, at least,” Bodie said, willing to be convinced.

“Depends, I reckon. Is quiet always best?” Ray placed his mouth against Bodie’s, provocative and demanding, and Bodie let himself be taken, just for a moment or two.

“Yeah,” he said softly, hauling Ray closer against him. “I can see how you wouldn’t mind company.”

“So stay,” Ray said, and led the way to his room, stripping his clothes off with dispatch, but no more so than Bodie. On the bed, Ray leaned over Bodie, his eyes bright and desperate, and Bodie put his hands firmly on his shoulders, recognising the need for distraction in Ray, and far more willing to offer this than a listening ear.

“Ooh, sailor,” he joked. “You are eager.”

Ray laughed, not truly amused. “I’ll give you eager, sunshine,” he said, and kissed Bodie again, mouth harder now, hips rubbing against Bodie’s. He moved his mouth from Bodie’s lips to his throat, nuzzling in and nipping at the skin.

“Vampire,” Bodie complained.

“So?” Ray said. “You and the polo necks, what does it matter?” His hands went everywhere, callused heat running over Bodie, while Bodie laid his hands over the smooth skin that covered the broader housing of wiry muscle and bone. He grew restless under Ray’s regard. Ray always took his time, even when he was gagging for it, playing with Bodie as if he needed to impress him. Always impressed his birds, did Ray. You could tell by their faces. _Ray’s_ face softened as he ran a hand down the length of Bodie’s right arm, and Bodie took that moment to flip him and pin him beneath him.

If Ray was given an opening for vicious speed he could be fearsome, but in close quarters - and there were none closer than this - weight counted. Ray heaved beneath him with frantic strength, muscles and his cock both straining upwards before Bodie quieted him with one careful, anticipatory kiss. 

“Enough playing,” he said, but gave into the urge to lip his way across Ray’s shoulder and neck, just as Ray had earlier. “Come on. Let me see you finish it.” He shifted enough to let them both have leverage, held Ray tight enough to give him something to fight against and for. They wrestled in sex sometimes the way they wrestled on a sparring mat; Bodie wanted them both exhausted, both of them rocking together into pleasure and then sleep. “Yeah, that’s it,” he encouraged softly, half tempted to raise himself on his arms so that he could look between them and watch as Ray lifted his hips. Instead, he stayed close, and let himself be lost in the sweetness of friction, and the increasingly desperate pace of movement and breath. “Christ,” he muttered, gone barely before Ray, aware of Ray’s following groan and the punishing grip of his hands, and struggling to measure the weight and pressure of his body while Ray writhed beneath him.

“Better?” he asked when they were done, shifting himself to lie beside Ray, before he leaned over and grabbed a handful of tissues from Ray’s bedside table. “Here,” he said and offered some, watching as Ray wiped down his front. Bodie followed suit, and then wadded his tissues and aimed for the rubbish bin. Ray grinned, and threw also, and then applauded with three slow, silent claps that they both hit their mark.

“Move over,” he said to Bodie, and clambered over him. “Better if I’m on the side with the phone, right?”

“Yeah,” Bodie agreed, suffering no objection to the view or the contact, and settling back onto the other pillow, which was still warm. 

Ray turned out the light, and Bodie rolled onto his side and inhaled the scent of the bed before he fell asleep.

~*~  
Ray’s ribs, cracked by Peter Crabbe’s car and Arthur Pendle’s vicious kicks, were healing and this fact was celebrated with chicken and chips at Bodie’s flat. Ray had made it quite clear that he had a not-so-hidden agenda.

“I want a bath,” he’d said in the car. “I’m not going to deny that it was bloody convenient having a shower at my place, but I fancy a bath now that I’m allowed, and your place has the bigger bathtub.”

“Well, of course.” Bodie had nonchalantly granted the greater desirability of his current bathroom. “Who has the most charm to unleash on the nice ladies in Property Management?”

“For all the good it does you. Still going short since Claire gave you the push, are you?”

“I,” Bodie had pronounced with great dignity, “am not going short, my son. I just didn’t want to regale you with the tales of my successes while you languished bed-bound and lonely.”

Ray’s look had been sidelong. “Yeah, languishing and lonely, that was me. I’ve got a lot of pent-up energy now,” he’d said, with a wistfulness fake as counterfeit coin.

Bodie had chuckled. “Well, in that case, by all means have a bath at my place, Ray. Very relaxing, a nice bath. Might do something to siphon off all that …energy.”

“That was what I thought,” he’d said, with great satisfaction and a slow, sly smile.

And now he was sprawled out on Bodie’s couch, quietly replete and licking the takeaway grease off his fingers.

“Barbarian,” Bodie said and passed him a paper serviette. “Wipe your fingers, and then go and have that bath of yours.”

“Not a bad idea at that,” Ray said, standing and presenting Bodie with a view of his bum.

“And you can get that thing out of my way too.”

Ray turned, precisely deliberate about putting his groin very much in Bodie’s field of sight.

“Shouldn’t have thought you’d mind.” But when Bodie leaned forward, tempted, Ray stepped neatly away. “But since it’s a bother…” He threw a look over his shoulder, one part temptation, one part amused cheek, and Bodie stretched out on the sofa and thought cheerful, lustful, thoughts while the noise of running water came from the bathroom. He left the telly on in the background and gave half his attention to the orderly nonsense of a cryptic crossword, grinning as Ray serenaded the tiles. Eventually he decided that bath time had been stretched out long enough and rose from the sofa. 

“Oi, sybarite,” he said, poking his head round the bathroom door. “Turned into a prune yet?”

Doyle must have dropped his head under the water at some point – his hair was damp and curling tightly amid the heat and steam. Now he lay as full length as the bath would allow, head leaning against a towel at the bath’s back, arms stretched out along the sides. “I don’t think I care if I do. God, sometimes you just need a long, hot bath.” He smiled in minor ecstasy, his eyes shut, while Bodie stared in appreciation, and then remembered something.

“We never did get around to showing you the glories of a proper shave,” he said.

Ray opened his eyes and sent a narrow-eyed glance Bodie’s way. “Fancy it now, do you?” he enquired with devastating double-entendre.

Bodie leaned down to take a handful of damp hair and give it an admonitory tug. “Yes, I do, and giving me that look isn’t going to distract me.”

“It’s not meant to,” Ray said. “Go on then. Attend to my personal grooming. Do you want me in or out of the bath?”

“Oh, you look very happy there. Very picturesque. And I have a stool in the kitchen and the basin’s just there.”

“Good,” Ray said softly, and turned the hot tap to top up his bathwater.

Bodie stripped to his briefs – Ray was going to go through towels like a dose of salts and there was no appeal to the idea of his bare arse on the painted wooden stool, or wet trousers if things got… sportive. He readied his gear, gave thanks that his flat had a gas heater for the water, and then sat himself next to Ray, who looked deceptively relaxed.

It was something different, this, handling Ray intimately, but with a purpose outside of sex or the grim investigation of possible hurt. The throat was such a vulnerable area and here was Ray’s, extended, available, exposed. Bodie prided himself that he hid the depth of his fascination, and teased Ray about his Father Christmas appearance with the white beard of lather and laughed at the scowl. “Righto, you know the drill,” Bodie said, and Ray pushed his upper lip over his teeth to allow Bodie to shave under his nose. It went steadily, the gentle scrape of the razor against Ray’s evening beard shadow, the gradual revealing of his face from under the shaving cream. Finally, Bodie passed him a face cloth.

“There,” he said, “wipe yourself down. And you can get yourself out of my bloody bath. You must have shrunk enough in the wash to need to go down a couple of trouser sizes.”

“Shouldn’t think so,” Ray said, standing in a small shower of water. His meaning, and his cock, were clear.

“You know,” Bodie said, “you might be right about that.”

~*~

One of the great joys of a pink, damp, very clean Ray was getting him dirty again. They spent a brief, laughing period in the bathroom after the sex, wiping themselves down at the basin, brushing teeth – all the necessary personal care that didn’t have the glamour and urgency of the physical heat before. They tumbled back into bed in the dark, and Bodie was settling into a comfortable position when Ray insinuated himself close enough to plant a kiss, not much more than a peck really, on Bodie’s forehead.

“I’m not a girlie, Doyle,” he opined into the dark. The mattress rocked as Ray rose up on an elbow, and then strong fingers gripped Bodie’s jaw, not gently, before the hand dropped and drew down his chest and abdomen to finally cup his groin.

“Between this and the lack of tits, I think I’d guessed that.” Ray lay flat again, but his hand stayed where it was, in a hold just this side of threatening. “I know what you are, Bodie, and if I want to give you a kiss good night, then I bloody well will. You can save the ‘queers don’t kiss’ bullshit for someone who’s stupid enough to buy it.”

“We do kiss. Very messily, I might add.” It was meant to be teasingly sexual, but it came out petulant, like a kid who’d dropped his ice cream.

Ray sounded oddly patient, a man determined to make his point. “You know what I mean.”

It felt as if that spot on Bodie’s forehead burned him. “We can’t afford to be queers and do the job we do, you know that.” 

Ray laughed, a terse noise all the more bitter for the previous pleasure of the evening. “Course not, petal. There’ll be girls. Expected of red-blooded lads like us, isn’t it? But we’re not exactly straight either, Bodie, and when we’re in bed and I’ve got my hand on your balls you can accept the odd gesture of affection after we’ve got each other off, right?”

Bodie took a long, slow breath and laid his hand over the one Ray held at his groin. “Very odd gesture of affection, this one,” he said lightly. Apologetically. 

“Yeah, s’pose it is at that.” Ray’s hand moved back up again, Bodie’s hand tracking along with it and resting over the knuckles and tendons, to stop over Bodie’s chest.

Bodie wriggled slightly, and kept Ray’s hand pressed against his skin while he extended his free arm for Ray to rest upon. “Here, have another odd expression of affection,” Bodie said, as Ray settled his smoothly-shaved neck, his face turned towards Bodie, his hand still pressed against his skin. 

“There’ll always have to be girls, Bodie. At least some of the time.”

“It’s not exactly a hardship. I like girls. You like girls.” Bodie saw no harm in it. He didn’t plan on taking up unconscionable amounts of anyone’s time. He couldn’t afford to, not when CI5 was as demanding as it was. Lucky that Ray Doyle came as part of the package.

“But we’ll stick with each other. For when we want to.”

“Yeah, mate. We’ll stick with each other.”

They lay like that, quiet in the dark, and then Ray said, “I’m getting a crick, and you’ll go numb. Good night, Bodie.” There was another of those soft kisses, a closed-mouth brush against Bodie’s cheek, and they settled separately into comfortable postures for sleep. Bodie couldn’t have said which one of them dropped off first.

~*~  
Bodie was glad to see the back of that grotty hotel room in Green’s grotty city. Only a few nights over two visits they’d slept there while they investigated the soon-to-be-imprisoned Detective Sergeant Chisholm and his merry band of thugs, and one night Bodie found himself awake at 2.30 in his separate bed listening to Ray snore. He yearned briefly for the relative safety of his London flat. Ops were for business, and playing around here would be especially foolish given that they’d made such a point of letting the local coppers know where they were staying, but the thought of Cowley’s face if he and Ray were found to be method-acting their way to representing ‘gay youth’ did provide Bodie with a broad grin in the dark. 

He was looking forward to the return to London and a night in, and then Ray turned to him in the car and said, “You fancy taking a sideways turn to Derby?”

Bodie leaned back and stroked his chin in exaggerated portrayal of deep thought. “Derby.” He pronounced it like he’d never heard the word before. “Why the hell would I want to go to Derby?” he enquired, in more normal tones that carefully cloaked wariness. One minute they’d been discussing Ray’s teenage sexual exploits, and wasn’t that a luscious subject for Bodie’s private consideration, and now his no-account Midlands city of origin was the goal?

“It just occurred to me that I haven’t seen my mum and sister for a while. And if Mum ever finds out I was in this neck of the woods and didn’t visit her then I’ll get a bit of a rocket.” It was a masterful display – wry awareness that Ray knew he was being manipulative, combined with genuine, plaintive uncertainty.

“Forty-five minutes out of our way, Ray. Plus however long they decide to embrace you to the family bosom.”

“Won’t have to stay long,” Ray wheedled.

“Christ, put you behind the wheel and you go mad with power, don’t you?” But Ray was already heading for the slip road that led to the Derby interchange and Bodie made no more complaint. He told himself that they’d get back to London soon enough. Warm with the glow of sorting out Green and his heavy-handed minions, Bodie felt he could afford to indulge Ray a little more. What was a side trip to Derby after taking a chance on finding one good copper in a nest of bent ones? Besides, he was curious. Ray would disappear at Christmas and other occasions, ops and Cowley’s beneficence permitting, but he didn’t talk much about his family.

It was a steady drive to Derby. Ray overtook traffic with careless skill, barring one determined old dodderer in a Morris Minor who would never know the insults that Ray offered his parentage, driving ability and virility, and then there was Derby. Just as staid, just as minor an English city as Bodie expected it to be. He could see why Ray had got out.

Ray drove them with the ease of familiarity until they reached an undistinguished suburban area, and then he parked. He stared out the car windscreen, chewing on a knuckle. He got out of the car and indicated that Bodie join him. The sky was a grey haze as Ray led him up along a narrow road looking down on the houses below.

Ray pointed out the terraced houses, with their tiny yards out the back. “Have a bit of history. That was our old street when I was young.” His index finger stabbed left and right. “Fifth down from there was ours. Crème de la crème, as you can see. And there’s the allotments behind.” Not many of the plots were tended and there was a group of children playing on a weedy, overgrown patch. They were climbing in and out of a battered box that once protected some housewife’s brand new cooker or washing machine. Some trick of the lie of the land sent a boy’s rough voice rising clear to Bodie and Ray. “You’re a bloody useless astronaut. I would have managed the splash-down much better.”

The response rose less clearly but sounded unimpressed.

Ray grinned. “All space ships these days. It was pirates when it wasn’t the war when I was a nipper. You ever do that? Shoot the Boche?” He mimed shooting a machine gun from the hip. “Rat-a-tata-rat-a-tata.”

“Nah. Was reading Baden-Powell’s Boy Scout manual and thinking pure thoughts about how to make a camp stove out of an old tin.” All that pure and manly outdoors activity on waste ground, the better to be away from home. Bodie had played machine guns. Once. His father had frozen in place and then fetched Bodie a clout on his head that left his ears ringing for two days.

“You? Pure thoughts?”

“I was very young,” Bodie said, with an air of apology that wouldn’t have fooled a young nun, let alone Ray Doyle.

“I’ll bet you were.” Ray looked a little more. “Behind that place, with the gate painted that poisonous blue out the back, that’s roughly about where old Ted Clarke had his patch. He heard Mum and Joyce giving me a joint bollicking one day and he saw me later and said that he knew my dad and if I ever wanted to get away from those bloody women that I could come and see him. He had a shed and let me keep a few comic books there. Taught me about roses. Bit of a character was Ted.”

“Very important, roses. Something quiet for those moments in between being a right tearaway.” Bodie said it with an almost straight face.

“Oh, of course. Just another way of preparing for the Cow’s grand plan. Roses and lavender, that’s what we fight for.” Ray’s voice fell into a mock Scots growl. “Come on, let’s go and see the family.” He led the way back to the car, and slouched his way into the passenger side, pointing with his index finger out the windscreen as Bodie got in. “That-a-way,” he said, unenthused, directing Bodie some distance from where they’d stopped, until they were parked in a street of tidy bungalows. “They finally got something decent on one level. Stairs are a bother for both of them. Took bloody long enough,” he said morosely, and then knocked at the door. There was no answer, and experimentally, Ray turned the handle. It opened and he popped his head in, diffident in a way that Bodie seldom saw. They walked into a small, profusely floral front room. Curtains, lounge suite, carpet – somebody liked roses and the colour blue.

“Mum? Joyce?”

A cry of joy came from a back room. “Ray?” A very small woman, given the strength of her voice, came through the door, leaning on a stick. “Oh, you brat. Never a word of warning. Come here!” She put out one hand, and Ray eased into her hold, bending down to gently hug her.

“How are you, Mum?” There was a smile at last. Bodie had begun to wonder, and made sure he beamed politely in his turn.

“Oh, not so bad, and delighted to see you.”

Ray straightened. “Mum, this is Bodie. Bodie, my mum, Dorothy Doyle.”

“Ray’s mentioned you, Bodie. And everyone calls me Dot, even if it does go terribly with the surname.” She smiled. Bodie didn’t see much of her son in her, but then she turned her head and the profile was unmistakable. “That’s my mum.” A nod of her head indicated a picture of a woman with her hair uncompromisingly pulled back under an enormous hat. “She said that I couldn’t marry Ray’s dad because I’d be Dot Doyle. Like it was a fate worse than death.”

“Pleased to meet you, Dot,” Bodie said respectfully. This was Ray’s mother, and he reckoned that Ray would have ways of making him pay if he didn’t behave properly.

“Where’s Joyce?”

“Cath took her out – she’ll bring her back soon enough. You’ll stay for tea, of course.”

“Yes,” Ray said, adding sternly, “and tea will be catered by that Indian takeaway you like. I’ll send Bodie out for it, spare him some of the family visit.”

“So long as you don’t send me out penniless.” Bodie smiled at Dot.

“Oh, he won’t leave you wanting. He sends us a bit when he can and I save it up for some luxuries.” Dot turned her son to face the sofa. “So what do you think of the lounge suite, eh?”

Ray froze, a rabbit caught in the headlights of flowered upholstery. “It looks very nice, Mum,” he said helplessly.

“It suits the room well,” Bodie said with a plain simplicity that made Dot smile and made Ray’s eyes bug with disbelief.

“I’ll make some tea,” Dot offered.

“No, you won’t,” Ray said. “You’ll sit yourself down and let me do it. Your hips can have a rest for a change.”

“Bossy,” was all his mother’s reply, amused and a touch over-excited. “The kitchen hasn’t changed since last you came.” She eased herself carefully into a chair set up on wooden blocks, her eyes following her son as he disappeared into the kitchen. Bodie refrained from offering help, and sat himself down amidst the floral abundance.

“Bodie?” Dot said. “That’s what you like to be called?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She nodded, but he could see the speculation. “And what are you and Ray doing here? Not work-related, I hope. Not that I know much about what Ray does for work. National security. Protecting the nation. All that.”

“Civil service,” Bodie said with small smile. “And Derby is perfectly safe. We’ve finished a job up the road and Ray thought it would be nice to call in on you, and your daughter.”

Dot smiled, resolutely cheerful. “He’s a good lad, and it was nice of him to think of us. Your London work keeps you busy.”

“Yes, it does,” Bodie said.

“It was good of you to agree to be dragged along.”

“Not at all. I’m looking forward to a nice cup of tea.” He said this with carefully-judged cheek, and watched dimples appear as Dot’s smile deepened.

“Oh, you’ll get that.”

Bodie’s eyes scanned the room, noting a couple of pictures of a man with Ray’s slanted eyes and broad face, and a picture of what must be Ray at about ten, in short trousers and with his hair slicked into submission. He noted things that weren’t there. Books, or a newspaper that wasn’t the local rag. Nothing to show where Ray might have learned some of his more eclectic tastes. Then he brought his attention back to Dot. “You haven’t always lived in Derby, I understand? Ray was telling me old stories of getting into mischief up the road.”

This blatant fishing expedition was ignored. “Oh, he did that, back in the day. Nearly drove me mad, but he settled, which I’m glad of.” Her gaze wandered back towards the kitchen door.

Bodie considered how much anxiety Ray might have caused Dot that a job where he was regularly injured, and no sign of a wife or children, presented such a settled picture.

“And what about you, Bodie? Are you a London boy?”

“Me? No. I started in Liverpool but I’ve moved about since then.” 

“Liverpool! I wouldn’t have realised that. And now you’re in London. All roads lead to Rome?”

“Exactly.”

Ray came in at this point, carrying a tray laden with tea things, and Dot’s warmly courteous air brightened even further. “Here,” he said, placing the tray on a table beside Dot’s chair. “You can play mother.”

“No playing about it, my lad. Sit down.”

Tea was poured and shared out. There was small gossip about neighbours and friends, and then Dot tilted her head at the sound of a car stopping.

“That’ll be Cath and Joyce. Open the door, Ray.”

The door opened onto a street still day-lit, and Ray pushed it wide before he stepped outside. Bodie stood in courtesy, hearing the hum of voices and the sound of a car pulling away. The wait for Ray’s sister to come inside lengthened, until there was the bump of wheels over the threshold, and a woman entered, pushing a walking frame along in front of her.

“Hello, love,” Dot said. “Have a nice time?”

Joyce Doyle (was she a Doyle? Ray hadn’t mentioned) walked awkwardly. Ray followed behind her, coming around the side, but she said, “Don’t fuss, I know what I’m doing.” Her tone was brusque and her face was drawn with tiredness. “Yes, it was a good time, Mum, and now I’m paying for it. Daft thing to stay out so long.” She nodded at Bodie but otherwise ignored him while she reversed neatly, if slowly, and dropped into an overstuffed armchair. “Hello, stranger,” she said to Ray. The edge in her voice was softened with a smile. “Come and give me a proper hug now that I won’t fall over.”

Ray leaned down to give the hug and a quick press of cheek to cheek. “How are you?”

“Same as ever.”

“Joyce, this is my friend, Bodie. We work together.”

“Pleased to meet you …Bodie. That’s something different for a name. Runs in your family, does it?”

“Something like that,” Bodie said smoothly. 

Joyce looked almost old enough to be Ray’s mother herself, and not just because of the effect of exhaustion and the walker. 

“Ray’s treating us to Indian for tea,” Dot said. “He was up here for work, and thought he’d drop in, and Bodie was kind enough to not mind being dragged along.”

“Lovely,” Joyce said. “Sorry you’re not seeing me at my best. Some warning would have been nice, Ray.”

“Well, he’s here now, and I’m looking forward to my food,” Dot said quickly. “You’re sure you want to send your friend out, love?”

“It’s not that far, Mum. Bodie can navigate, it’ll be no bother.

Bodie chimed in with his support. “No bother at all. Ray’ll give me my directions, and I’ll bring back the goodies, but I need to know which goodies I should be bringing back.

The food orders and directions neatly stowed away in his memory, Bodie left Ray to his loving family for the half an hour it took to drive five minutes down the road and back and to wait for the food. “I could get used to this,” he joked, as Ray dug into his wallet and produced enough notes to pay for the feast.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” was the retort. “Don’t get lost.”

“Back before you know it,” Bodie said, and drove off. Ray’s directions were clear, the evening was fine and Bodie was uneasily glad to get away for even a brief while. George Cowley’s boys were never at a loss, but Bodie hoped that Ray appreciated his presence in that cosy, constraining little house. He brought the food back and it was laid over the coffee table in the living room. ‘Mild’ had been the instructions, no mouth-burning spices for this occasion, but the food was good enough of its kind.

Dot led the conversational charge once again, nattering about names that Bodie didn’t know and didn’t care to, and asking a few carefully general questions about life in London. He soon learned that Ray’s father was dead, had been dead since Ray was a tiny child, that Joyce was Ray’s senior by about fifteen years and that multiple sclerosis accounted for her walker and air of exhaustion. He munched the last poppadum (guest’s privilege, Dot said as much with an approving smile), and watched Ray’s face as he listened to his mother and looked at his sister with a touch of a frown sometimes. Ray’s contribution to the family history was the explanation that they’d moved to the big city to support Joyce when she first grew sick – “because her useless git of a husband didn’t know his arse from his elbow.” For this Dot gave him a gentle cuff across the back of the head for ‘language’ and Joyce drily said that she preferred Derby in the end so perhaps it was just as well that she and her mother had come back when he finally left her.

They seemed pleasant enough old tabbies in their comfy floral basket of a house, but Bodie couldn’t quite imagine the two of them dealing with a young Ray Doyle. Ray, past thirty now and tempered by exposure to hard experiences and hard men, was still mercurial, curious, tenacious, and downright vicious on occasion. Not to mention that he was a deeply sexual being; even if he’d been exaggerating about his early start with Annette of the dance hall, Bodie still imagined that Ray could have caused Dot heart-burnings of all sorts, especially if he’d explored any interest in men at a similarly early age.

“You must be bored, Bodie,” Joyce said. “All this family conversation.”

“Not all,” Bodie said brightly. “Some of it’s new to me.”

“Oh, is it?” Joyce said. “The old town and familiar faces will be out of sight, out of mind, down in London, I suppose.” Cats had claws, it seemed.

Bodie caught Ray’s barely perceptible wince, and a well-hidden tension. Someone was working on keeping his temper. “Work keeps us busy,” he explained to his sister, obviously and overly patient. “Our boss is a bit of a terror.”

“So we’ve gathered,” Joyce riposted. 

“Turn the telly on, Ray,” Dot said hastily. “It’s my favourite night, so you’ll just have to sit a bit. Make us some tea, since you’re here, and let your dinner digest and I’ll let you get away once Dick Emery’s over.

Bodie half expected Ray to make his excuses; he was already standing, having switched the television on. He wished Ray would, and then their eyes met across the twilit room, and Bodie shrugged mentally and nodded, barely a move of his head. If Ray wanted to martyr himself on the altar of filial piety for the length of the Dick Emery Show, then Bodie would acquiesce. This once, but Ray owed him for this one. Oh, yes he did.

More tea was presided over. On the telly, a bobby was telling a flamboyantly camp Dick Emery that he was chasing a bank robber. “Big, dark, broad, well-muscled. Have you seen him, sir?” Emery heaved a sigh. “No, but I’ve dreamt about him.”

Joyce eyed the television with disfavour. “I don’t know what you see in that, Mum.”

“Oh, it’s not his best character, love, but you’ve got to sit through the rubbish to get to the good stuff.” Dot laughed in triumph. “And now it’s Mandy.”

Emery and his mincing character with his platform shoes was nothing to do with Bodie or Ray. Nothing at all, but Bodie felt Ray’s eyes on him, apologetic and troubled. He’d sprawled on the floor beside his mother rather than park himself next to Bodie on the sofa, like a great cat sitting in the circus ring beside its trainer. Bodie let his gaze be something more than sidelong and looked Ray in the face and smiled. He returned his gaze to the screen but a frisson ran over him, the sense of unfriendly eyes, and he saw Joyce looking at him, frowning. It made her look like her brother, and the scowl was no kinder to her older features than it occasionally was to Ray. Bodie lifted one eyebrow in civil enquiry but she looked away, and he let it be, and watched Mandy the sex-starved spinster try to get her leg over. Dot chuckled, and Bodie braced himself. Not long now before they could leave.

Ray stood with the credits. “Time to go, if Bodie and I want some sleep before the next working day.” He leaned down and took Dot’s plump shoulders in his hands. “It was good to see you, Mum.”

Dot hauled Ray’s head down to plant a firm kiss to his forehead. “Yes, and good to see you, too. Drive safely, won’t you, love?” She moved to stand, and Bodie rose hastily and gestured that she should stay sitting.

“Don’t shift on my account, Dot. Lovely to meet you. And you too, Joyce.”

Joyce nodded. “Thanks for coming, and going out for our tea. Like Mum said, Ray. Drive safely.”

“Tell Bodie,” Ray said. “I thought I’d let him do the driving.”

Bodie put on a look of affront. “Oh, you did, did you?” He bowed, a tiny, joking bend of his spine. “Well, I promise to deliver him safely back.”

They walked out onto the street fairly garlanded with farewells, from Dot at least, and Bodie sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. Dusk was setting in, and it wouldn’t be long before they’d see the glow of streetlights.

Ray leaned back against the head-rest, his face that of a man relieved that a job was done.

“Thanks, mate. Not the most scintillating evening I could have offered you, was it?”

The way back to London retraced the route to the local shops where Bodie had bought their meal, and he noted landmarks idly, a comforting habit that he kept wherever he was. “Could have been worse.”

Ray made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “Always know I ought to see more of them – but every time I come up here I remember why I wanted to get away. Wanted to do more than slave my days away at the railway works. But they’re still my family.”

“Nice to see,” Bodie lisped, reminded of the telly.

“And nice to bloody go, too. Sorry about that. About Joyce and that bloody TV show.”

“Another reason to get of out of Dodge?” Bodie asked.

“Not the main one. Some places are just too small, but yeah. Maybe I could have found some of Tom Pellin’s ‘fellowship’ in Derby. But Christ,” - Ray’s knuckles pressed up against his mouth - “why stay here, _especially_ when you know that you fancy the odd boy as a change from the girls?”

“Are you trying to tell me something, Doyle?”

That got him a true laugh – short, not entirely whole-hearted, but still a laugh. “Anyone hanging around with Cowley’s mob is odd regardless of who they might think they fancy.”

There were traffic lights ahead of them, softly coloured in the growing dark, and Bodie changed down a gear. “Speak for yourself. I’m a paragon among men.”

“The Cow’s blue-eyed bulldozer – yeah, I know.” There was no snap to it, only a slightly rueful affection. Ray shifted in his seat, one leg stretching out into the footwell. “You never mention your family.”

“Following your example of British reserve, sunshine. Besides, my mum’s dead and I don’t know where my dad is and wouldn’t want to have anything to do with that piece of shite even if I did.”

It came out easily but Ray’s sideways glance was speculative. “A self-made man, are you?”

“I like to think so,” Bodie said. He was still easy, but final.

“Pity you made such a botched job of it,” Ray said thoughtfully, accepting for once that he was to be balked of further information but taking a small revenge for the loss. Bodie only laughed.

He didn’t want to think about his parents, and as the distance fell away between them he was more than happy to not think about Ray’s family either. Much more convenient to imagine the two of them sprung full-grown from the brow of George Cowley, although imagining that dour man in the role of amorous Jupiter amused him more than it ought. He could throw a lightning bolt or two, he’d give Cowley that.

“What are you grinning like a loon for? It wasn’t that funny,” Ray complained, and Bodie proceeded to enlighten him.

~*~

Bodie had ended up at Ray’s flat again – partly for the wholly practical reason that it was closer to HQ, and partly for the wholly practical reason that a day of adrenaline and fear had left them both on edge, and Bodie couldn’t look at Ray without his thoughts flashing between him prostrate on a cracked tar seal forecourt, and hopefully soon prostrate on the plain, clean sheets of his bed. 

“You’re a jammy bastard, you know that, don’t you?” Bodie said in the car. He’d wounded one man and got the one that took a shot at Ray boxed in, his throat tight with terror until he’d seen Ray stir, and seen the patch of old oil that had taken his feet out from under him.

“Tell that to the lump on the back of my head, mate.” Reminded, Ray’s fingers explored the lump in question, running his fingers through the curls and wincing.

“Our amour propre wounded by going for a bloody lucky slide, is it? Never mind, mate,” Bodie said. “I’ll kiss it better for you.”

And here they were, and he had kissed it better and more as soon as they got in the door; now he slouched on Ray’s couch while Ray fussed in the bathroom. The fall of water from the shower had barely finished when the phone rang.

“Want me to get that?” Bodie bellowed from the lounge, and Ray’s affirmative floated through the open bathroom door.

“Ray Doyle’s phone,” he intoned into the speaker, and wondered if it was one of Ray’s birds, and just how much mischief he might be able to get away with if that were the case.

“Who is this?” a woman enquired. Her voice was both peremptory and, to Bodie’s ear, a little slurred and not at all familiar.

“Tell me who you are and I’ll hand you over to Ray.”

“What are you doing at Ray’s flat at this time of night?” the woman said belligerently.

Bodie was stirred to irritation. “Keep your knickers on, darling. I’m not a bloody burglar.” 

He was about to stand, and dump the phone on the table when the woman said, “Your kind can’t leave him alone, can you?”

“What?” Bodie said, and then the voice prodded memory. “Joyce? Look, hang on, he’s in the bathroom.” My kind, he thought. My kind? What sort of bee has she got in her bonnet? He put down the phone and crossed the few feet to the bathroom. Ray stood stark naked in front of the basin towelling his hair. “You might want to put something on, bathing beauty. I think it’s your sister on the phone.”

Ray turned, startled. “What the bloody hell does she want?”

“Why don’t you ask her,” Bodie suggested, nettled, and with an uncomfortable suspicion now as to what ‘kind’ he might be. Ray grabbed for his dressing gown and stalked out into the living area.

“Yes,” he snapped into the phone. It didn’t sound a promising beginning to Bodie, or to Joyce, if Ray’s sour expression told any true tale. 

“Look, I’m sorry, I just don’t expect calls at this time of night… Oh don’t start that one again… Mum’s out visiting Aunty Pat is she…? Yes, I _can_ tell, actually…

Bodie shifted uncomfortably in the armchair where he’d put himself, and he stood once more, half intending to go, but Ray lifted an admonitory, forbidding index finger before returning to the increasingly acrimonious discussion with his sister. And then his face froze briefly in utter blankness, and he cast a look Bodie’s way that Bodie was quite sure was completely involuntary, before he looked away again. But Bodie could tell that he was on Ray’s radar, as if they were on an op, or in a firefight.

“That’s not an accusation that I’m interested in hearing from you… my private life is none of your bloody business… he’s my bloody friend, Joyce! … What, are you worried for me or worried that there’ll be no more extra dosh for lounge suites and too much bloody sherry? Oh, for… will you calm down? Calm down, love.”

Ray had indicated that Bodie should stay – but Bodie couldn’t listen to that one-sided conversation and fill in the Derby spaces of it without feeling the urge to hit or shoot somebody. He had to move. Ray hadn’t had a chance to tidy the bathroom, and his tidiness there was haphazard at the best of times. Bodie hung up towels, straightened the bottles on their shelf in the shower, closed the door left ajar beneath the vanity unit. Then he moved on to the kitchen. Ray’s kitchen was seldom left squalid (not like McCabe’s – now there was a man who’d never seen the point of picking up after himself) but there were a few dishes in the sink. They were washed and dried with slow attention, and by then Ray had hung up the phone. He appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Bloody hell. Never hear from her from end of the year to the other and then that.” He looked Bodie, and his not so altruistic domesticity, up and down and asked, “What did she say to you?”

“Hardly had a chance to say anything,” Bodie said. “I was just your answering service.” He hung up a couple of mugs.

“What did she say, Bodie?”

“My kind can’t leave you alone, apparently.”

“Jesus fuck,” Ray said. “Look, I’m sorry. Mum goes visiting sometimes and if Joyce is well enough to be able to walk to the cabinet in the front room she tends to over indulge the drinkies when she’s away.”

“Yeah, you’d need to be well on the way to legless to envision you as a delicate lad corrupted by the big bad poofs.”

Ray scraped his hair back in frustration. “She doesn’t know anything, and when she’s sober she wouldn’t say a bloody word.”

“We’ll hope that your mum doesn’t get too social, then, shall we?” Bodie folded Ray’s tea towel with delicate precision and hung it over the rail by the sink. “I’d best be off, I think.”

“Bodie….”

“She’s likely to ring you back, Doyle. Either to give you another blast or to tell you how sorry she is. Not like you and I don’t know how the drunken argument goes.”

Ray still stood in the kitchen doorway. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s nothing about you – she just tends to assume that any of my friends must be that way.”

Bodie wasn’t sure whether to be offended or charmed by this defence of his machismo. “Well, as you’ve pointed out yourself, we are ‘that way’, sunshine.” He approached, and with careful hands on Ray’s shoulders pivoted him out of the way. “But I think the mood’s broken for tonight, and you wouldn’t want me listening through the keyhole if she rings you again. Tomorrow.” He moved through the lounge at forced march pace and gathered up his jacket and wallet and keys, all of them so soon abandoned when they’d first come inside. Then he made his escape outside to the street and his car.

He paused a moment by the driver’s side door. There was a vague panic simmering in him, and he hated it. He was a man who valued both his competency and his control, and some drunken, invalid woman had set him off like this? She knows, hissed a little voice in the back of his head. Well, so? She couldn’t prove a bloody thing and Ray was probably right – she wouldn’t blab. The shame of it, your baby brother a queer. 

From the viewpoint of a life packed with unwilling and sometimes violent good-byes, Bodie had figured out soon enough that, barring a very few exceptions, his deepest loyalties and deepest affections were given to men, sexually or otherwise. He might never touch Ray again and still know him as someone that he’d care for to his dying day. But that visit to Derby and Joyce’s little tantrum broke the illusion of Ray and him as a charmed circle. No longer only Bodie and Doyle, Cowley’s Bisto Kids, together against the world.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, he thought. I’m jealous. Ray would not be amused if he knew. And neither would Cowley if Joyce, under the influence of her ‘drinkies’, voiced her suspicions to anyone other than her brother, although the canny old bastard might already know or suspect. He could imagine Ray dropping the information into a background file or a psych assessment with an air of ‘how do you like that, then?’ Bodie preferred to keep his mouth shut.

Joyce might not keep so quiet. Hell, Ray might not. Ray liked to think he was fighting the good fight. Bodie only needed to know that he was going to get paid, and that his superior was neither a fool nor a villain.

The car heater took a while to get going, and Bodie tried to tell himself that the rush of cool air would help him clear his head, and stop his unwilling imagining of a world of ‘either/or’, rather than ‘both’; CI5, or Ray Doyle. 

Neither of them?

He felt cold, and turned the heater up. There was no reason it would ever come to that, but he heartily wished that he’d never come under Joyce Doyle’s scrutiny.

~*~

Ray let him brood for two days after Marikka’s death. Bodie expected that Ray was giving him a chance to get over himself, while he finished unpacking his boxes in his new flat all the better to have somewhere to seduce the lovely Christine, woman of the current moment. Two birds with one stone, like Willis and that East German bastard, Schuman, really. Political aims accomplished, and Schuman conveniently shot of his wife. A woman that Schumann would have regarded as hopelessly politically naive must have cramped his style, regardless of glamour.

He waited for the third, prolonged blast on the bell before he let Ray inside.

“Took your time,” Ray said as he shouldered his way past Bodie’s none too welcoming stand by the door. “Got any booze in?”

“Evening, Bodie. How are you, Bodie? Did you know Cowley’s getting sick of you being in a strop, Bodie?”

Ray shrugged off his jacket and threw it over the back of the chair. “Yeah, we can consider all those said. Although Cowley’s in a good strop himself. It’s very discreet, but I’ve got a feeling that the balloon’s well and truly gone up, even if it is in a highly secret manner.” Ray paused. “He wasn’t best pleased at what nearly happened.”

“No, neither was I. And by the way, Cowley let me listen in to your tape with Marikka. Thought I might find it of use. He’s been talking to the trick cyclists again, and I wish that he wouldn’t. So, thanks for the bloody trust extended, _mate_.”

Ray ducked his head but then he lifted it again, and uncompromisingly stared Bodie in the face. “I had to be sure,” he said, practically word for word from the end of the tape.

“Why? Couldn’t be sure enough of me without a proper investigation? Figured that just because my skills have been for sale before that they still might be?”

“Bodie…”

Bodie rode roughshod over Ray’s attempt to speak. “I've always had the decency to stay bought for the duration. It’s good business practice if nothing else.”

Ray was keeping his temper with visible effort. “It’s not a question of fucking business.”

“Oh, isn’t it?”

Ray doggedly forged on. “If you listened to the tape then you heard me say that I was trying to prove your innocence.”

“To yourself as much as anybody. When I’ve watched your fucking back for three years now, Doyle!”

“Yeah, while you tell stories that make you sound like a bloody psycho half the time, and that’s when you bother to say anything about yourself that’s not all about getting your jollies with some bird!”

“What, darling? Jealous of me, or of them?”

Ray was right up in his face now, everything about him heated – the warmth of his body, the light in his eyes, and the bite of his voice. “I don’t give a damn that you were in that hotel room with her. That’s the way it has to be.” Ray’s voice softened to careful persuasion, even as the rest of him stayed on high alert. “But she was an old friend and you cared about her; that much was obvious. People are willing to do stupid things for people they care about.”

Bodie had given Ray glare for glare but at that he dropped his eyes. “Tell me about it. If the poor bitch hadn’t been ripe to be manipulated into meeting up with me again she might still be alive.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead, either.”

“No, no it doesn’t,” Ray said and walked past Bodie to the shelf where the scotch and glasses sat. He poured two stiff drinks and offered one to Bodie and sipped at his own before he sat down on the sofa.

“Look, Ray. I appreciate the concern, I’ll grant that you and the Cow had my best interests at heart, now be a good boy and sod off, will you?”

“No,” Ray said with dangerous simplicity, and took another sip. “Sit down, Bodie. Have your drink.”

“This is my bloody flat, Doyle!”

“Yes, it is. So why don’t you have your drink.”

Bodie tossed it back in two swallows, which was a waste of good booze, and poured himself another one while the alcohol lined his throat and stomach with fire. Ray made no comment, only looked at Bodie through narrowed eyes as if no more was to be expected of him. 

“Go home,” Bodie said.

Ray shook his head. “You’re stuck with me, mate.”

Bodie stared at Ray, sitting on his sofa like he owned the place, and a set of stark contrasts flashed through his mind. Marikka’s long hair, Ray’s curls. Marikka’s generous curves and soft skin, Ray’s muscled angularity and body hair. Marikka sprawled in death on the ground, and Ray very much alive. In one thing they were both alike – stubborn and liking their own way even when they knew it might cost.

Forget the drink – there were far better distractions.

“Then let’s have some proper company, eh?” Bodie leaned over Ray, one knee on the sofa and cupped Ray’s jaw in his hands with ambiguous tenderness. They both well knew the fragility of the neck and throat. They kissed. Doyle was tense under his hands, but his kiss held nothing back. Bodie let him go and stood. “Come on then. You’ve already told me you’re not going anywhere.”

Ray followed him to the bedroom. “We should…” he began. Bodie knew what he was going to say, but he had no patience for the red herring of a blanket and a pillow on the sofa.

“I don’t give a rat’s arse. Let’s just do this, all right?” He was already stripping off his clothes, letting them lie where they fell. “Come on, Doyle, where’s my tea and sympathy?”

“You can be a right wanker sometimes,” Ray said.

“And you can always go if you like.” Bodie, naked now, stripped the covers off the bed and stood by the side of it, hands on hips in display and challenge. 

Ray’s gaze raked him up and down, before he started stripping off his own clothes, while Bodie watched every movement, until Ray moved into his arms and they kissed again. It was more like rivalry between two lions to see who could take the most meat from a kill, and then they were on the bed, grappling, marking each other with bites and bruises, and Ray, the bastard, was letting him win. Bodie knew that, even as he laid the weight of his body over Ray three-quarters prostrate beneath him, just enough reach for Bodie to take Ray’s cock in his hand, even as he frantically rubbed against Ray’s arse and then found the space between his thighs. Ray braced himself so that Bodie could take a better grip, his strength underlying his false surrender, and Bodie let his vision white out in the successful quest for an ending for them both, pleasure that made him groan out loud and hide his face in Ray’s sweaty skin until their breathing calmed.

“Off,” Ray said, and Bodie obliged. Ray rolled onto his back and lay still, his eyes shut. “Should I stay any longer?” he asked.

“If you want,” Bodie said, like it didn’t matter, and then waited for judgement.

“Let’s pull the bloody covers up. I’m getting cold,” was all Ray’s answer. He had to go fully to the end of the bed, where the sheets and blankets lay on the floor but were anchored by a tightly military tuck-in. Once everything was drawn up, Ray lay on his side. Bodie’s heart sank – Ray had the look of a man with questions.

“You don’t fuck,” Ray said.

Such stupid relief that it was nothing about Marikka. “Not everybody does.”

“Not everybody fancies something up their arse, but you don’t meet many men who don’t like a good fuck from the other end. As it were.” Ray’s smile was unapologetically and cynically lewd.

Bodie leaned up on an elbow. “Listen up, DC Doyle. No, I don’t fuck men or get fucked. No, I didn’t have my boyish innocence torn from me in the torrid heat of Africa or anywhere else. When it comes to anal, I just… don’t. Got a problem with that?”

“No, no problem. I was curious.” Like Bodie was a jigsaw puzzle spread out over a table.

“Well, now you don’t have to be curious any longer, do you?”

“My cup overflows,” Ray said, and shut his eyes. “Do you think there’ll ever come a time when we feel like we get enough sleep?” His breath fell into a slow, shallow rhythm with remarkable speed.

Sleep, Bodie thought longingly. Exhaustion threatened to leave him ragged, even loose and relaxed as his body was after the sex. Partly that was because he kept thinking of Marikka, and of those two slimy gits under Willis’s command. He’d led them a chase, and he hoped they had some good bruises to show for it.

Better to think of Ray, and his stubbornness and his questions. Kept on wanting little slices of Bodie, did Ray. Many more slices and he’d have a surprisingly large portion, more than Bodie had given up to anyone else. Was that what that uncomfortable visit to Derby had been? Ray being fair and offering Bodie his slice, the good and the bad? Dot’s care not to ask awkward questions about London, and her innocent pride in her ugly lounge suite, and Joyce and her suspicions, and Ray’s memories of a place where people still knew his name and asked his family about him?

He could hardly offer anything in kind. Nobody would know Bodie’s face in Liverpool now. He’d been gone years, and good riddance to bad memories. Ray learned far more when he sized up Marty Martell, if he only knew. Bodie leaned a little closer to Ray, not enough to touch, but enough to feel the body heat radiate towards him. He breathed deep, and caught Ray’s scent, and for the first time in several days began to comfortably slide away from wakefulness. Random thoughts ran through his head, but they were fleeting and unimportant for now. He’d have to find somewhere suitable for a new emergency cache… God, hadn’t Cowley torn strips off him over that… later…

He slept.

When he woke up, it was three full days since Marikka had been murdered and Bodie nearly fitted up for Biermann’s murder. Ray lay still asleep next to Bodie and there was a mark on his shoulder that Bodie could find it in himself to regret, the morning after. Ray opened his eyes. “Morning,” he said gravely, and stretched, wincing when he leaned one way into the sheets.

“Feeling it, are we?” Bodie asked.

“Yeah, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I gave as good as I got.”

“You could say that,” Bodie said, discovering gentleness in him after some sleep. He tried to tousle Ray’s hair, but the grip of a callused hand stopped him. “I could hardly make it worse, sunshine.”

“I expect you couldn’t. Doesn’t mean I want your greasy mitts in it.” They lay there, awkwardly caught together and frozen for a moment. “Any better?” Ray asked. His hand was warm, so short a time freed from the comfort of the bed.

Bodie untangled them and leaned on his elbows, looking at the pillow rather than Ray. “Well, I slept. And I suppose I’ve had worse company when I think about it.”

“Very good of you, mate.” Dry, dry as dust and judging… something. Ray’s niggling aches, Bodie’s state of mind, the price of tea for all Bodie knew or cared. Enough. 

“Time to rise and shine, Doyle, and drive back to your place so that you don’t turn up at work in the same shirt you wore yesterday.”

“Man with a plan. Very strategic.” Ray sat up, flashing Bodie the bruise on the side of his thigh as he emerged from the bedding.

“Cowley’s best, after all,” Bodie said to his back. 

Ray twisted, lithe as a cat, and cast that measuring look on Bodie’s face once more. Whatever he saw there made him smile, before he shook his head briefly. “Yeah, mate. So you say.”

 

~*~  
They kept on doing this, but then there was no reason that they should stop. Rolling over in bed, Ray’s bed or Bodie’s bed, and seeing the other there, knocking against the other in restless sleep in the night, starting their days in the other’s flat.

“Got any coffee? Instant will do.” Ray sat up in the bed, his hands scrubbing through his hair while he yawned.

Bodie stayed huddled under the covers, resenting the draught of Ray’s movement. “You know where it is. But go have a piss first. I want my shower.”

Bodie was shaving when Ray appeared at the bathroom door, a cup in his hand.

“That was slow. Not your usual speed.

Ray’s hands were curled around the mug and its warmth. “It’s my second one, you prat.”

“That explains it then.”

Ray kept watching, and Bodie turned so that he could stare back. “What? Got a pimple on my arse or something?”

“On your incomparable bod? Surely not.” Ray looked down at his mug, and then lifted his head like a man on a mission. “You ever think about where you’ll be ten years down the track?”

“Christ, Doyle. I can do without heavy thinking this time of the morning.”

“Or any time, I suppose,” Ray said waspishly. “Well, do you ever think about it?”

“No,” Bodie said, a lengthy, steady emphasis to the word. He returned his attention to the mirror and his razor. “You don’t look back, and you don’t buy up trouble for the future.”

“Who said it had to be trouble?”

“In our jobs?” Bodie shut his eyes against the stupid twist in his chest. “Getting tired of it, are you?”

“No, not yet. But we can’t do this forever.”

Bodie leaned down to wash the last of the shaving foam from his face. “Thinking about your declining years, are you? Nice little wife and a semi-detached with rose bushes out the front?” His voice might have been muffled behind his towel, but Ray had excellent hearing.

“Who knows? There’s nothing wrong with roses.”

“Or a nice little wife?” Ray’s lips pursed at the suggestion. “Someone to come home to?” Bodie continued, ruthless with himself as well as Ray.

“Maybe. Nothing wrong with that either.” Ray shifted as Bodie headed for the hallway, and then stilled as Bodie reached out to wrap a hand across the back of his head, burying it in warm, slightly lank hair. Bodie leaned in, touching his forehead to Ray’s. The odd gesture of affection – Ray had made it plain that he liked them. Then he drew back, revelling in the surprise on Ray’s face, and the light in his eyes, soft and very, very rare.

“Tell you what,” Bodie said. “For now, I’m planning on living in the moment – but ask me again in five years’ time, if we’re still alive.”

Ray was grinning. “If you’re dead, question is whether it’ll be the criminal element or me that’s killed you.”

“Should be able to keep you in check. I know you better than most of the criminal element, and I don’t seem to have that much trouble with them.” His mouth curled up smugly. Keeping Ray in check might tax a better man than Bodie, but if that failed then simple distraction was a task that he felt more than equal to.

“So bloody sure of yourself, aren’t you? Go and put a shirt on, flower. We’ve got work to do, and I’ve got a date to note.” Ray pushed past him into the bathroom and shut the door for a change. “I’m holding you to that five years,” he called through the door.

Bodie didn’t doubt it.


End file.
